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After a recent windows update I have had multiple issues with my network drives on my home network. Some of these were caused by my router which I have replaced. Now I have all but one drive working correctly. I cannot figure out the one remaining problem.
If I map the drive by the name (\MyBookWorld\Public) the map works OK until I reboot. After reboot, I get the error of "The Specified network name is no longer available". I cannot connect to drive via start>>run either. If I try to access the drive by IP address using start>>run, it works.
If I disconnect the map drive and reboot, I can connect from start run to the drive after every reboot.
If I map the drive by IP address, reboot and then try to use the drive, I get "Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use". Net use shows the drive disconnected and has an entry to the unc name. It works if I use start>>run to the UNC name.
I have verified that smb is enabled on the machine. I have made sure the services of "comptuer browser", "LanmanServer", and "LanmanWorkstation" are set to automatic start.
I have removed the mapping, made sure that it was not in the net use list in the command prompt and made sure the registries at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2 for this drive have been removed.
I have added the mapping to the Hosts file.
I tried mapping to a different drive letter and get the same problem. Any ideas on what in Windows is messing this up?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Thanks for that.
Doesn't help much, the end users are incapable of doing anything as complex as remapping drives, especially when their desktop didn't come up and they can't find File Explorer, so me taking a trip in there every 2nd day to remap it and slap it around more isn't working for any of us.
thanks
Geoff
Yeah, pretty much the same, only the IP and names are changed. Hmm, was the old NAS Synology as well? I suppose it could be some kind of interaction with the SMB implementation on the older Synology NAS boxes. This is an oldish one as well. That said, it seems people using Windows Server are also having the issue, so maybe not. We're in the process of migrating this system to new HP mini workstations with SSDs, with the intent of using the NAS to host each WS libraries and .PST file(s). This is presently unworkable due to the unreliability of the link to the NAS.
Good luck.
Geoff
Yeah, I'm pretty much at the same place. Don't bother a reinstall, it won't fix it. I used a clean version of W10 20H2 on new hardware and it does exactly the same thing as an earlier incarnation of Windows 10. I've checked the Synology NAS and it seems to be fine, Linux talks to it, in fact I can get XP to talk to it and map drives etc. No problem. Just Win 10. I've also seen this with W7, but far less frequently and was usually associated with underlying network issues that don't exist in this network.
Best of luck.
Geoff
Yeah the fix with using the IP Address and not the hostname, stopped working for me too. 2021-01-21.
Incidental, at the same time as I setup my new Synolgy NAS. I am waiting for my new HDD to arrive and in the mean time I have chucked a bunch of spare drives into it, and created three different volumes on it. I have mapped these with IP, and these are currently working fine, but the old one is not. Explorer slows down when this happens too. Disconnecting the old NAS solves that.
Geoff, sorry to say that I'm burnt by the same issue. I'm still searching for a solution also.
My problem started around the week of 18/1/2021, and as I've made no changes to my home network I have to assume that a Windows update was applied in the background around then. Symptom is that File Explorer takes a long time to look around on start-up, and I can no longer connect to mapped drives (to my Netgear NAS) but I can open local drives.
I tried numerous things, after checking nbtstat, arp and ipconfig data, including clearing all internal caches I can find. I can ping the NAS by both it's IP address and name fine, but clicking on the mapped drive I now receive (eventually) an error stating either that the drive mapping is in use or that the path can't be found. Trying to open the NAS (under Network) in the left pane of File Explorer no longer shows the shares on the NAS - File Explorer just times out saying it can't access \<nas>.
I've also tried listing the fixed IP address of the NAS with its name in the hosts file, with no success.
And I can't even reload key Windows system files on my laptop as the "reset PC" option doesn't work either - it keeps failing without further information.
Interesting to note that I have a NVidia Shield media streamer on my network, and it can access the same drives on my NAS via SMB (SMB 2 or 3, not 1) to play content from there. It's clearly an issue isolated with the Windows PC, and not the NAS nor the local network.
I'll keep watching this thread, but I've run out of things I can think of trying sort of re-installing Windows - and I reeeeeally don't want to do that.
